Chicken Thigh and Zucchini Yakitori

Summer 2015 was the summer of kebabs. I think my roommate and I were making grilled kebabs at least twice a week. If we were bored, we made kebabs! Guests coming over? Kebabs! Just a random sad Monday? Kebabs! And then we found this chef who did yakitori nights. Yakitori is basically smaller skewers that are inspired by Japanese flavors. The chef cooked one food per skewer which I liked because you could pick and choose which foods you wanted. This is my humble take on his epic yakitori dinner.

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When we went to the dinner by far our favorite things were a chicken thigh yakitori dipped in a green pea miso sauce. I honesty still think about that sauce like once a month. Sadly I have tried many, many times to recreate that sauce and I have never been successfully. I’m going to need to know how that chef made it so smooth and creamy and just addicting! So no sauce for you guys, but I did happen to nail the chicken thigh yakitori. Since I know people will ask this, you can do this with chicken breast, but it wont be as moist and tasty. If you haven’t cooked with chicken thighs before, I highly recommend giving them a try.

If it was summer time, I would definitely try to grill these, but sadly, there is still snow on the ground here in Philly. Thankfully, I discovered a grill pan this year and they are getting me through these cold, dark, winter months. Ideally you should cook these on a grill pan, but if you don’t have one, any kind of frying pan will work.

An hour or so before you start cooking make sure you soak your skewers in water. If you don’t do this they might char or catch on fire while you are cooking. Next cut your chicken thighs and zucchini into bite size pieces and place them in separate bowls. Mix together the marinade and pour half over the chicken and half over the zucchini. Allow them chicken and zucchini to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour. Then skewer the chicken and zucchini and grill in a pan. Exact instructions are down below. Serve your yakitori with rice, cauliflower rice or over a salad! As always, if you make this recipe, please share it with me on Instagram!

Add chicken skewers to the pan and every 2 minutes rotate the skewers and drizzle with the extra marinade. Continue cooking, rotating and drizzling with marinade until they have been cooking for 12 minutes

Remove chicken skewers from pan and add in zucchini skewers

Cook the zucchini skewers in the same manner as the chicken, but for 7 minutes only